Google Turns To TV Ads
IN A MAJOR SHIFT IN promotional strategy, Google—which has long eschewed nearly every form of consumer-targeted brand advertising—quietly began running 15-second sponsorship spots on PBS's science program "NOVA" earlier this year.
Context & Ripple Effects
For most of its short life Google has refused nearly every form of consumer-targeted brand advertising, building its business on self-service text ads while positioning itself as the disruptor old media should fear — coverage in late November framed its rise as an existential threat to 'old-media dinosaurs.' That posture makes this quiet move notable: after ZDNet reported in early November that Google was thinking about the future of TV ads, the company has now begun running 15-second sponsorship spots on PBS's science program "NOVA."
Timing matters. In December Google was reportedly — though unconfirmed — locked in a two-horse race with Microsoft for an Internet advertising partnership with Time Warner's AOL unit, meaning it was simultaneously courting traditional media companies and paying them for airtime.
First-order effects
- PBS gains a sponsorship revenue stream from a new class of advertiser — a search company that previously bought no television inventory at all.
- Google's "NOVA" audience now sees the brand promoted through the very broadcast medium its success has been blamed for undermining.
Second-order effects
- Television networks and ad agencies get evidence that the biggest online ad spender is willing to become a traditional-media buyer, softening the adversarial dynamic described in November's 'extinction' coverage.
- If the sponsorship reads as more than image-building — a test of how the medium works ahead of the TV-ad thinking reported by ZDNet — broadcasters face the prospect of Google as a rival intermediary, not just an advertiser.
Third-order effects
- The pattern to watch is a search company learning television from the buy side before deciding whether to sell or measure it — a structural threat to agencies' role between advertisers and networks if Google applies its auction model to TV inventory.
- A confirmed move into brand media would blur the line that defined Google against old media, forcing rivals like Microsoft and Yahoo to decide whether offline reach is now table stakes.
The trend: Google is edging from purely online direct-response advertising into traditional brand media, treating television first as a customer and possibly later as a market.